Australian far-right populist party Pauline Hanson's One Nation won its first seat in the country's House of Representatives in a by-election Saturday, a preliminary vote count showed. The result is in line with a surge of electoral support for far-right populist parties globally. Britain's ruling Labour party this week suffered a widespread loss of seats at council elections. David Farley, a former agribusiness executive, won the rural seat of Farrer, some 550km (340 miles) south of Sydney and 320km (200 miles) north of Melbourne, for the anti-immigration party with 59.3% of the vote, defeating the incumbent centre-right Liberal Party, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
One Nation's first preference vote in the by-election was 42%, the ABC said, compared to the 6.6% first-preference vote it got at a federal election last May.
"We're like a mason with a chisel and we're carving letters into Australia's democracy," Farley said at a televised election event. "One Nation has reached the end of its beginning."
The result is significant in that it marks the first time One Nation has won a lower-house seat since Hanson formed the party 30 years ago.
But it does not affect the parliamentary majority of the ruling Labor Party, which holds 94 of 150 lower-house seats. The seat was left vacant when Liberals leader Sussan Ley resigned in February.
The Labor Party did not run a candidate in the contest for the seat that has been held by the opposition conservatives since it was formed more than half a century ago.
Party leader Pauline Hanson, a senator, standing beside Farley, said the result was "a win for Farrer but a bigger win for the nation".
She knew her party was favoured to win but when the first television station projected victory "I actually got a tear in my eye", she said.
"You really don't understand the journey I've been on," she added.
Liberal leader Angus Taylor said at another televised event that the by-election was "always going to be a mountain to climb ... and we have to take away some hard lessons from this".
Taylor said his party would focus on immigration rates. "For too long we have been a party of convenience, not of conviction, and that must change," he added.
